"Send me! Send an army! Send a thousand ships! I don't care, just bring her home. I hate being without her."
[ PERCY JACKSON x FEMALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
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0011. | ROCK, PAPER,SCISSORS... LET'S BE FRIENDS!
The cold set in at her toes first.
Octavia had hit the water headfirst. Water shot up through her nose, bleeding through her airways into her lungs. Her instincts forced her to inhale in the aftershock of the crash against the water but that only meant she choked on the water she was inhaling. She was suffocating.
She thought the hit against the water had killed her. If she wasn't dead, which she guessed was the case given she was still alive (she guessed...), she had at least broken her ribs. She was right. The second she identified the break, she felt it. She gasped in pain and choked on the water. More liquid flooded her lungs and her brain began to tighten.
Oh great, she thought. I'm suffocating.
She couldn't swim. She hadn't in years, but it wasn't her inability that was stopping her, it was the cold. The hypothermia had set in like lead, biting into her muscles like lesions. It was a vicious pain and she was facing it on two fronts—the agonising cold of the Atlantic waters, and the burning ice of extinguished heat from her hair and heart.
She had to think. She was sinking. She was losing air. Soon, she would actually be dead. She had to think! Adrenaline was speeding up her processing. Hypothermia was slowing it down.
The saltwater was stinging her eyes but an impairment of vision was the last of her worries. The water was dark, no light was breaking through the surface, no signal of a sunbeam from her father. She was alone, all except the bubbles that had escaped her mouth when she choked.
Bubbles.
They would be escaping to the surface, reaching for air... She needed to do the same.
She made to kick, to flounder, to swim, but her limbs were made of ice. The cold had spread.
She kicked again, desperate. She moved, or the water around her moved, but she kept kicking. She threw her arms around. They were stiff and barely moved against the strong tide but she kept fighting. She had to fight.
The cold had taken her joints. As far as her hips, nothing moved. As far as her shoulders, she was frozen.
The bubbles were rising higher, gone from her vision. They were too fast for her slowing body. She was too cold. Her body was shutting down, trying to conserve heat to her heart, but it wouldn't work. If the hypothermia didn't kill her, the Atlantic would. She was dead already, but she kept kicking.
The frost bit at her toes like a fish. It burrowed its teeth into her, sinking into her flesh, her blood, her muscles, weakening her from the inside out. She could feel it, as numbing as the cold was supposed to be, this was vicious and painful. Agony set in as her toes turned blue and her fingers cracked into place, no longer flexible or useful. The darkness in her vision was fogging her brain. She couldn't tell if she was conscious or not.
